Date of Award
1924
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
History
Abstract
Cecil Rhodes has been dead twenty-two years. The flesh of the man has long since become dust; his dreams are about to become realities... two slender streaks of shining steel form Cape Town to Cairo. For the red now cleaves the heart of Africa, north and south, from the Inner Sea to The Cape of Good Hope. A great splash of red up and down this vast continent where fifty years ago but little red was to be seen.
And this is the simple task I have set myself in the present paper: accounting for the red, this astonishing growth of the red. It will be no profound discussion, will this little paper, of causes and effects; of the factors, innumerable and inexplicable, which gave rise to the British Empire; of those desires and beliefs of men which have resolved themselves into the phenomenon we imperfectly designate as "Economic Imperialism". These esoteric matters must be left, for the present, to gentlemen who possess more leisure and a greater faculty for analysis than I. An undergraduate, at best, can touch but lightly any of the intriguing subjects which constantly confront a student of History. And this business of surveying the British red has proved not intriguing, but tremendously instructive.
Recommended Citation
Jones, Leslie L., "From Cape Town to Cairo" (1924). Honors Theses. 601.
https://scholarship.richmond.edu/honors-theses/601